Cover Oregon

The measure would dissolve the independent corporation that was created to run Cover Oregon, which was supposed to create a website to enroll people in health insurance under President Barack Obama’s health care law. Cover Oregon spent $300 million but never launched a working website, embarrassing the state’s political leadership.

The company’s new complaint adds an allegation of copyright infringement on top of the earlier accusations that Oregon breached contracts and failed to act in good faith. The amended suit was filed last week in federal court in Portland.

In a letter to Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, Gov. John Kitzhaber said he has fired state managers in charge of Cover Oregon, and now it’s time to hold accountable the website’s main technology contractor.

Oregon, once expected to be a national leader in the federal health care overhaul, on Thursday moved to become the first state to dump its troubled online health exchange and use the federal marketplace instead.

This assertion goes directly against what Oregon officials have told the public and independent investigators who reviewed the project: that Oracle was to blame because the tech giant’s staff regularly reassured the state that the portal was almost ready, asserting that the next release of the website would work.

Carolyn Lawson, the former chief information officer for the Oregon Health Authority, says managers at the Health Authority and the insurance exchange, known as Cover Oregon, “privately threatened and publicly scapegoated” her.

An analysis of new government figures by The Associated Press shows that Oregon is third from last when it comes to enrollments in private coverage when compared with 13 other states and the District of Columbia that built their own exchanges.